III. I HAVE A ROMANTIC VIEW OF MY PAST
ND: The CD booklet has “December’s Child” and “Nerstrand Woods” as the two songs in the center pages. Those songs seem like a center of gravity for the record, in terms of reflecting where you and Victoria each came from.
MO: “December’s Child” is pretty much, you know, a straight love song to Vic, in the sense that I bring up something that happened in her past. We went back to Louisiana and they had opened up all those casinos, and they had pretty much gotten the Red River and sold people on the idea that there was gonna be commerce there. And instead, they turned around to make it into casinos. And she was very upset about that.
“Nerstrand Woods” is from — I lived with my grandmother on my father’s side right by there, near Faribault, Minnesota, for a little while. My whole father’s side was from right by there, in Kenyon and Faribault [about an hour south of Minneapolis], and they had farms. And they still do. We stopped in there on our last tour.
ND: So was Nerstrand Woods a place you went to a lot as a kid?
MO: Yeah. Just like the song says, my grandmother would go there, and sometimes I’d go along with her. When it comes time to write a song, I usually reach back into those kinds of things. I think I have a romantic view of my past, a bit. But it’s important, and I try to pass that on.
ND: The second Jayhawks record was called Blue Earth, which is a small town in that same area.
MO: Yeah. I’ve been always trying to get at this thing. And I’m not quite sure, but maybe I got at it better this time….You know, today, you’ve got people dropping bombs on themselves, you’ve got the threat of chemical and biological warfare. And you look back on people you know, and you go, the people I knew were not even thinking about things like this. It seems like we came from a place that wasn’t involved with that. It’s just crazy stuff that we, as working people of these countries, don’t really want anything to do with, as far as I can tell, because who would? So I’ve always tried to romanticize a different set of values that isn’t any different than the ones we knew already.
ND: There is a certain romanticizing of childhood days; maybe it wasn’t quite the way you remember it, but it’s still important to remember.
MO: Yeah, it’s still important. And also, I picked that up from bluegrass, and early country music. They always had this sense of value in their music. And they could make it funny, they could make it sad, whatever — but it has romantic views of things. The Carter Family, the way they talk about things — it’s uplifting, in a way, and it makes the things in your everyday life seem very important. And they are.
IV: A SMALL CULT ITEM OF A SMALL CULT ARTIST
ND: So how did you and Gary Louris decide to do a song for this record?
MO: There was a movie, The Rookie, and they asked us to write a song, and we wrote two, and they declined to use them in the movie. But we had this full song done, and Josh [Grange] was out here, and Don [Heffington], and it was just the four of us. We did it in a couple hours, and we decided to put it on the record. I called up Gary and said, “Yeah, I wanna use this song on my record.” “Great,” he says, “all right.”
ND: Had you kept in touch with Gary much over the years?
MO: Um, a couple e-mails here and there, and some phone calls when I was in Minnesota, things like that. But, basically, when I was in Minnesota, I just bopped in and saw Razz, and got caught up in Razz’s stuff. So, it’s probably my fault; I should’ve checked in more, but I was always hanging out with Razz.
ND: You mentioned there were a couple songs you wrote together?
MO: Yeah, the second one was put in the trash heap of history. What happened was, they wanted a tempo change, and, so, there was a 100 percent tempo change. And I think I focused a little too much on the tempo change.
ND: Do you expect this to be just a one-off instance, or did you and Gary talk about doing anything else down the road?
MO: We talked in terms of that a little bit. But I think in the near future, we’re both kind of going down our own roads….That was the perfect way to do it, though, really. Just crank out some songs and record them, and whatever happens, it’s a real positive thing. It’s a good song, and we got it recorded right then and there, no fuss no muss.
ND: I’ve often wondered whether the very first Jayhawks album will ever be reissued on CD.
MO: As far as I know, that’s something that Marc Perlman, Gary and I, I guess, someday will get together and talk about. I still feel like it’s just some people finding the beginning of playing music, really.
ND: Do you hear much about that from fans?
MO: Not really. [Laughs] You know, it’s kind of neat that there was only 2,000 of them put out, and that they’re on vinyl. It’s kind of a neat collector’s thing. I ran into one in Italy recently. So it’s kind of a fun thing. That’s definitely a small cult item of a small cult artist. I don’t have a big following. I don’t think that that’s really a hot item….But maybe after our runs on these next two records, we’ll get together and maybe do something like that.
